


The Best You'll Never Have

by vellaphoria



Series: Running (and when to stop) [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: M/M, Tim being creepy, but he feels bad about it, sean bean voice: one does not simply stop stalking nightwing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2017-08-02
Packaged: 2018-12-10 06:34:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11686056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vellaphoria/pseuds/vellaphoria
Summary: Tim is going to die of embarrassment if Dick ever finds out.He wonders what that looks like in an autopsy.





	The Best You'll Never Have

He watches.

This is, considering his history and how he _got_ this job in the first place, not a new phenomenon. There’s just something about a childhood spent climbing through Gotham’s figurative and literal darkness to catch glimpses of the city’s vigilantes that lends itself to this sort of behavior. The shoeboxes lined with carefully organized pictures, reverently hidden in closets far away from his parents’ uncaring eyes are proof enough, really.

But Tim likes to think he’s learned some subtlety since then.

Sure, he never got caught  _then_ , but now that he’s Robin and already in the lair of the beast, so to speak, that sort of hobby wouldn’t go unnoticed for long.

The shoeboxes and the old, beat-up Polaroid are packed away in a safe house no one knows about – covered in enough dust for the years he’s been doing this. More pictures would be far too risky. Too  _obvious_.

Because Tim isn’t an idiot. He knows what this looks like, what it  _is_  at its base level. At best, a child’s embarrassing obsession. At worst? A stalker-worthy violation of privacy and trust.

Voyeurism, maybe, if he were actually getting anything resembling _gratification_ from this.

Tim hasn’t quite decided where on that scale he would place what he’s doing; how he would rank lists and speculation typed into spreadsheets, locked behind five layers of Oracle-proof encryption, and saved on a laptop that isn’t networked with anything but Tim’s brain and the thick haze of vague need best kept where no one will ever knew about it.

There isn’t a  _good_  way to describe it.

Though what he’s doing now, Tim thinks, is likely the natural progression of an impulse he’s never had the strength to stop himself from resisting.

Half the time it isn’t even a conscious effort. He  _has_  always been one of Batman’s stealthier protégés, and even when he isn’t trying, he knows how to subconsciously file away what he sees for later use. How to observe without telegraphing his actions or intent – skills he’d picked up  _before_  Robin that he uses when he has to.

And it never was a question of weather or not he  _has to_.

Because say what you want about Dick walking around the Manor in deep v-necks, showcasing mosaics of bites and fading bruises, but Tim knows that taking his eyes off him for even a second would be physically impossible. Like reversing the flow of Gotham’s river with a bucket. Or trying to reason with the Joker.

Tim can’t look away, but for appearances’ sake, he can at least _pretend_ he isn’t.

So he memorizes. He catalogues the bites and bruises arching up the curve of Dick’s neck and splaying across his collarbones. He takes note of every scratch trailing his spine through almost-accidental glances in the showers after patrol. Uses his eyes to follow the carved muscle of his hips and the distinctive purpling where someone has traced and then  _pressed_  with their hands.

Tim hates himself the moment after he thinks it, but he wants to _be_ those hands.

But he never will be, so – all of it ends up here: this spreadsheet that he’s kept for too long detailing the history that Dick’s lovers leave on his skin. The places they revisit again and again, hypothetically the places that would make him  _moan_  under the right circumstances. He painstakingly records their worship and  _does not_  think about the prayers he’d like to leave.

Really. The Manor’s walls are far too thin for that sort of behavior.

Though the data readily at hand only gives him one side of the story.

He’s considered branching out; hunting through archives and security footage for the corresponding dates to see what marks he could find on Kory, Barbra, or Roy. To map the give and take of the older vigilante’s lovemaking: a complete picture reflected back as fuel for the dark flush of Tim’s face when he’s alone in a safe house with his lists and the muscle-memory of too many sparring sessions.

But that’s a step too far into obsession, even for him. More risk of leaving a trail somewhere, more risk of getting caught,  _especially_  when one of the people in question keeps careful track of everyone who accesses Gotham’s security footage. Discovery would put a stop to this before he’s seen his fill and therefore is absolutely not an option.

Also, Tim would probably die of embarrassment if Dick ever found out.

He wonders what that looks like in an autopsy.

So he does what Dick is always telling him to do and falls back on instinct. He mentally files away the marks the man didn’t get as Nightwing. He doesn’t take unnecessary risks. He anticipates when it’s going to be one of  _those_  nights and hides in a safe house to curl beneath his sheets and try not to think too hard about what sort of marks someone ( _he_ ) would have after a night under that playful smirk and those strong, clever hands.

But sensing that it’s going to be one of those nights when he’s halfway through patrol, stuck on top of a midtown skyscraper?

Robin doesn’t need instincts to know that if he sees so much as a  _fingerstripe_  on tonight’s patrol, he’s done for. He’s probably going to simultaneously combust from hormone overdrive and blood rushing to places it’s  _absolutely not needed_.

So Tim runs through a customary mental check of all his safe houses in the area and the best routes to get to them without hitting someone else’s patrol. Or getting ambushed.

Not that it matters, in the end.

Sometimes he wonders why they even plan these routes when vigilantes like Nightwing give literally zero fucks about following protocol or  _not sneaking up on Robin when he’s trying really hard to be invisible_.

But it’s Gotham and the universe hates Robin just enough that things like this are inevitable.

As…  _fun_ as rooftop tag is, he’s here to do a job and he really,  _really_  doesn’t need the distraction. Or the potential for utter mortification if Nightwing decides he wants to play when Robin’s in one of these moods.  _That_  only ever ends with him in a compromising pin that he maybe doesn’t try too hard to get out of.

Why would he? The pressure of muscle and Kevlar against his back grounds him in a way the constant access to jump lines and a grapple gun had made him forget.

Nightwing’s insistent fingers at his wrists and the vibrations in the older vigilante’s throat when he holds Robin down and tells him how  _good_ he’s getting – that’s just a bonus.

When it happens in the cave, he has to at least makes a token effort to escape the hold. Because Batman. He isn’t sure what Bruce would do if he found his third Robin on the training mats, laid out and moaning under the first.

Probably walk right back up the stairs like a good, selectively ignorant Bat-dad.

Or fire him. Pick your poison.

But up here, find the right rooftop and the only witnesses to Tim’s indiscretions are the gargoyles of Gotham’s revival architecture. Even if they could see what he was doing (or rather,  _not doing_ ), they would probably still be about as oblivious as Dick.

Unfortunately for Robin, oblivious does not equate to  _unable to find him when he’s hiding_. Nightwing has a freaky sixth sense for that sort of thing. Also a really tight uniform, and fingerstripes, and…

He senses more than hears the landing of an overly artistic dismount to his left.

‘Accidently’ falling off the roof sounds good right about now.

He’s on his feet and moving before Nightwing can get close. Restlessness is itching under his skin, making it second nature to drop into position for a spar.

The other vigilante does a double take. Maybe Nightwing just thinks he’s surprised him.

…not that Robin would admit it if he had.

He fights to keep his tone casual, but the words still rush out a little too quickly.

“Slow night?” Hopefully not. If there were a bank robbery or people occupying City Hall  _again_ , it would save Robin from whatever  _this_ is supposed to be.

Nightwing’s whiteouts narrow at him. Robin is letting more slip than he should.

“Yeah, but you could use some practice. Tag?” The older vigilante asks like he knows  _something_ is going on but isn’t quite sure what it is. Not optimal, but Robin can work with that.

That said, he would like to submit to the official record that this is a really,  _really_ bad idea. But sticking around on this rooftop and waiting for Nightwing to decide to try and guilt it out of him?

This high up, the  _thunk_  of the grapple meeting metal is loud.

“You have to catch me first!” Robin is running to edge of the roof and taking off before the sentence has can fully leave his mouth.

The spike of adrenaline amplifies the sound of his cape makes snapping out behind.

Nightwing’s voice recedes into the distance, but Robin still catches his exasperated, “That’s kind of the point!” before it fades entirely.

He’ll be right behind him, swinging out over Gotham’s skyline with a level of skill and grace that may actually be inhuman.

Being caught is inevitable, so the best Robin can do is damage control.

No witnesses.

Destination in mind, he turns the arc of his first swing into a second, and lets himself be swallowed by the Gotham night.

 


End file.
